Your private biographerFounding Families

Editorial method

How the Journal is written

Joan asks families to trust it with their stories. That only works if we are plain about how our own words get made.

Five rules

What every article is held to.

  1. 01

    Drafted with software, answered for by people

    Journal drafts are produced with the same kind of technology Joan itself is built on, working from a topic list and a written contract that fixes voice, structure, and boundaries. No draft publishes itself. A person reads every piece, checks every claim, and is responsible for what appears.

  2. 02

    Nothing is invented

    No family stories, quotations, statistics, testimonials, or firsthand experiences are ever fabricated. When an article describes how families record, keep, or share memories, it draws on published guidance and on how Joan actually works — not on composite characters designed to look like customers.

  3. 03

    Sensitive subjects get a slower path

    Pieces that touch grief, end of life, consent, or the law are held to supervised review before publication, with sources checked by hand. The Journal adapts to a reader’s situation; it does not diagnose, give medical or legal advice, or use fear to hurry anyone.

  4. 04

    The byline is honest

    Posts carry the Editorial team byline because that is who stands behind them. Joan — the product — is never the author, and no invented name will ever be. When a named human byline becomes public, it will belong to a real person.

  5. 05

    Corrections are welcome

    If something in the Journal is wrong, outdated, or unfair, we want to know. Write to us through the contact page and we will review it. Meaningful fixes update the article and its modified date; we do not quietly re-date old work to look fresh.

The same standard as the product

The Journal follows the boundaries Joan itself keeps: nothing enters an archive without approval, nothing is invented to fill a gap, and no one’s voice is synthesized.

Those boundaries are written down in our promise, and the reasoning behind them in about Joan. Questions about anything published here can go to a person.